Government peace panel leaving for Kuala Lumpur

MANILA, Philippines - The five-man peace panel of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) led by Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis will leave for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia today for the resumption of the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

“We are ready,” Seguis said a day before his departure for Malaysia.

Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Annabelle Abaya was invited to attend the opening ceremony on Tuesday.

Seguis is tasked to make the opening statement in behalf of the Philippine government while his counterpart, Mohagher Iqbal, will speak for the MILF at the two-day negotiations.

Other members of the GRP panel who will join Seguis are Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman, former Congressman Ronald Adamat, Tomas Cabili and former South Cotabato Rep. Adelbert Antonino.

Seguis said they will discuss the reactivation of the International Monitoring Team (IMT), the establishment of the Ad Hoc Joint Civilian Component of the IMT, and the renewal of the guidelines of the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG) whose task is to coordinate the interdiction and isolation of criminal and lawless elements operating near or within the MILF communities.

The reopening of formal talks will be the first time that full panel-to-panel members from both sides will be present.

The talks bogged down in August last year after the signing of the controversial Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was aborted but nonetheless, the GRP and MILF panels continued their back-channeling efforts to revive the talks.

MILF cooperative with military

Although apprehensive of martial law’s implications on all of their preliminary security agreements with the government, the MILF has been cooperative with the enforcement of military rule in Maguindanao, key MILF sources said.

The MILF’s website www.luwaran.com said that guerilla forces in Maguindanao have been ordered to stay put in their camps to prevent undue encounters with soldiers who are after 100 gunmen who slaughtered 57 people in Ampatuan town last Nov. 23.

“The martial law is not intended for the MILF, but complications might arise in the course of its implementation,” the MILF’s website quoted a rebel commander as saying.

Toks Ebrahim, chairman of the MILF’s Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH), said he and his government counterpart, Major Gen. Reynaldo Sealana, have been discussing since Saturday the implications of martial law on the ceasefire between state and rebel forces in Maguindanao.

“We are in close contact with our counterparts in the government,” Ebrahim said. “They assured us that this declaration is solely to contain the effects of the massacre.”

Ebrahim said the anti-crime mechanisms of the ceasefire, which enjoins the government and the MILF to cooperate in addressing security concerns in areas covered by the ceasefire agreement, are intact and functioning.

Gen. Raymundo Ferrer of the Eastern Mindanao Command said they have been closely coordinating with the MILF’s ceasefire committee to prevent any misunderstanding on the enforcement of martial law in the 36 towns of Maguindanao.

“The MILF should not be alarmed by the enforcement of this martial law. Government forces would not enter MILF territories without prior coordination,” Ferrer said.

Rebel commanders in the hinterlands and marshes in the second district of Maguindanao, where armed followers of detained Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan, Jr. are also hiding, have sent feelers that they are ready to block the possible escape routes of the gunmen if ordered by the GRP and MILF’s joint ceasefire committee.

Ferrer said there is even a possibility, under the security mechanisms of the government-MILF ceasefire agreement, that the AFP might ask the rebel group to help block possible escape routes of the gunmen.

Meanwhile, the provincial capitol’s vicinity in Shariff Aguak where the Ampatuans ruled with an iron-fist has been quiet. Most stores at the public market were closed and roadside vendors selling livestock, fruits and vegetable were nowhere in sight.

Ferrer said more soldiers will be deployed in the neighboring towns of Ampatuan, Datu Unsay, Mamasapano and Datu Saudi whose mayors were also implicated in the massacre.  – With John Unson